Week 043 — QR Code, CSS Variables, and a Dashboard Idea

The most interesting idea of the week happened on a Saturday when no code was supposed to be written.

Week of September 8, 2025

Progress

QR code assignment was broken on Tuesday. The culprit was a Grok-assisted refactor from a previous session that added documentation and XSS protection to the QR code handling code. The refactor introduced a change that broke the assignment flow. Fixed.

Photo upload broke again on Thursday. This keeps happening, and it's starting to feel like a structural issue rather than isolated bugs. Fixed again, but the fragility is notable.

The CSS file got actual structure — CSS custom properties (variables) for colors and spacing, pulled from a palette on Coolors. Desktop styling remains the hardest problem: the mobile-first design doesn't translate naturally to wider screens, and the items page and user profile page in particular still feel like a mobile design stretched sideways.

On Saturday, the idea for a user dashboard emerged: a primary landing page for logged-in users showing item counts by status, current points and stars balances, most recent notification, and potentially trending lost items nearby. The appeal was two-fold — practical (a better home base than the items list) and design (an opportunity to differentiate from generic app structure).

The Question That Appeared

AI-assisted refactoring that adds code "for safety" — XSS protection, input sanitization — is genuinely useful. But it also changes code in ways that aren't always immediately visible. The QR code breakage came from exactly that kind of invisible change. Review AI-generated safety improvements the same way you'd review any code change.

Next Week

Dashboard. Starting Monday.